Lidge has neevr gone a full season as a closer and people are concerned he cannot handle the workload. Given that his arm doesn't break down I expect ridiculous numbers from Lidge, his slider is absolutely flithy, his K rate should be as good as a starters. 150 K's sound about right.

Sean Tracey has my apologies, we all know Ozzie Guillen is an idiot. I'm rooting for you!

I wouldn't put K-Rod over Rivera just yet, but I'd probably take Lidge over Rivera at this point. I was wondering how you know that Lidge is gonna have 43 saves, if you have some insider info please share

Gagne and Lidge are my top 2 closers based on K's. K-Rod and Rivera is a tough call for me. I like K-Rod's strikeout ratios better, but its comforting having Rivera on your team (except when playing the Red Sox) due to production year in and year out.

Projecting saves is tricky. Last year we had discussions about this in the off-season too. Bad teams can still be good sources of saves, for example. Last year a lot of us kept pushing F. Cordero as a good closer to target. The lesson? Target the closer, don't worry so much about the team he plays on.

Projecting 50 saves for any closer is nuts. It's only happened 10 times in MLB history. Granted, all 10 have occurred since 1990, but that doesn't justify projecting any one particular closer to reach 50 (though you might project that some closer will reach 50).

The point is that it's really not worth ranking one closer over another because you project them to 7 more saves. Closers of Lidge and Rivera's caliber are likely to end up with a similar number of saves. Rank them based on their other numbers. I like Lidge better, due to his Ks.

ramble2 wrote:Projecting saves is tricky. Last year we had discussions about this in the off-season too. Bad teams can still be good sources of saves, for example. Last year a lot of us kept pushing F. Cordero as a good closer to target. The lesson? Target the closer, don't worry so much about the team he plays on.

Projecting 50 saves for any closer is nuts. It's only happened 10 times in MLB history. Granted, all 10 have occurred since 1990, but that doesn't justify projecting any one particular closer to reach 50 (though you might project that some closer will reach 50).

The point is that it's really not worth ranking one closer over another because you project them to 7 more saves. Closers of Lidge and Rivera's caliber are likely to end up with a similar number of saves. Rank them based on their other numbers. I like Lidge better, due to his Ks.

Agreed. I put lidge very close to gagne in my rankings this year due to his incredible amount of k's. Actually, i wouldn't be surprised at all if Lidge were the best closer this year, but I have to take gagne first as he has a long track record.